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I don’t feel the need to pile-on, and there are certainly better-expressed opinions than mine about Obama’s embarrassment in Copenhagen this week (most notably at NRO’s The Corner).

AND, after reading his remarks to the IOC, I was prepared to give the president what I thought was well-deserved credit for having (for the first time in his term representing all of us as our head of state) traveled to a foreign country and not bashing us.

Unfortunately, there’s this, the president’s response to a question of, of all innocuous topics, crowd control that he had to jump in and turn into yet another opportunity to admit how horrible America is (or at least used to be before we were all so wise as to choose him to save us from ourselves):

MR. RYAN: The next question relates to — comes from Mr. Ali, and thank you for the question. How do we intend to deal with all of the millions of people who will enter?

…

THE PRESIDENT: I think that over the last several years sometimes that fundamental truth [our diversity as a nation] about the United States has been lost. And one of the legacies, I think, of this Olympics Games in Chicago would be a restoration of that understanding of what the United States is all about, and the United States’ recognition of how we are linked to the world.

Last year, America elected a president with an obvious and personal dislike for the nation itself. When you think about it, why would the IOC bestow upon such a country the honor of hosting the enitre world?

Remember back at the beginning of September when President Obama promised to pay for his health care overhaul by rooting out waste and fraud in Medicaire? Well, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) has a plan which would provide one safeguard against fraud in federal healthcare programs. And, well, Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee unanimously rejected it:

Senate Finance Committee Democrats rejected a proposed requirement that immigrants prove their identity with photo identification when signing up for federal healthcare programs.

Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that current law and the healthcare bill under consideration are too lax and leave the door open to illegal immigrants defrauding the government using false or stolen identities to obtain benefits.

Seems Senate Democrats are doing their part to confirm Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) as the “truth czar” of the healthcare debate. Not just that, it shows that Democrats aren’t really serious about following up on the President’s pledge in his health care speech to eliminate “hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud” from Medicare. At the time, Charles Krauthammer found that pledge more than just dishonest:

That’s not a lie. That’s not even deception. That’s just an insult to our intelligence. Waste, fraud and abuse — Meg Greenfield once called this phrase “the dread big three” — as the all-purpose piggy bank for budget savings has been a joke since Jimmy Carter first used it in 1977.

Moreover, if half a trillion is waiting to be squeezed painlessly out of Medicare, why wait for health-care reform? If, as Obama repeatedly insists, Medicare overspending is breaking the budget, why hasn’t he gotten started on the painless billions in “waste and fraud” savings?

Senator Grassley gave Democrats an opportunity to show their commitment to preventing fraud and to put their votes where the President’s mouth was. And they balked. They’d rather please the interest groups who back their party than follow through on their own party’s rhetoric and act to safeguard that ever dwindling supply of taxpayer dollars.

It has been a full week since Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the New York Times acknowledged the Old Gray Lady’s sloth in reporting the scandal swirling around ACORN:

. . . for days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still. Its slow reflexes — closely following its slow response to a controversy that forced the resignation of Van Jones, a White House adviser — suggested that it has trouble dealing with stories arising from the polemical world of talk radio, cable television and partisan blogs.

The paper still has a lot of catching up to do. Over at Big Government, Matthew Vadum blogs about a memo from attorney Elizabeth Kingsley to the controversial left-wing organization telling them, in so many words, to clean up their act.

“But whether you try to implement some or all of these recommendations, there must be someone committed to follow-up. There must be a review mechanism, and a means of holding people accountable after any final decisions are made. If you do not make some hard choices now and ensure they are carried out, they almost certainly will be made for you.

Building on his post in an article on the American Spectator’s site, Vadum points that Kingsley discovered systemic problems with ACORN:

Kingsley explains that her concerns fall into four major categories: “respect for corporate integrity, the necessary separation between different types of political work, the niceties of 501(c)(3) tax compliance and accounting for those funds, and a big-picture question about organizational capacity.” She goes to great pains explaining that she is not trying to single any person out, “but to point to systemic institutional concerns.”

Vadum points something else which gets at the hollowness of Hoyt’s expressed resolve that his paper do a better job of reporting stories unearthed on the right: “the New York Timeshas published excerpts of the document”. So, maybe, you think, they’re getting their act together. If you thought that, you’re sure to be disappointed. When you follow the link to the Old Gray Lady, you get an article from last October, as in 2008, nearly one full year ago. I get the same results when I do a google search of te paper’s web-site: no mention of Ms. Kingsley and ACORN since October 22, 2008. (more…)

While researching another post which references the failure of the New York Times to follow up on Clark Hoyt’s acknowledgment that its editors (and writers) need scan the conservative press (including) blogs, I chanced about this headline which shows just how great has been their failure to consider conservative sources of analysis and opinion: U.S. Wonders if Iran Is Playing for Time or Is Serious on Deal.

Um, that’s what conservatives have been saying for years, at least since then-President George W. Bush all but outsourced negotiations with the Iranian regime to the Europeans.

From the first moment Spencer Tracy sets eyes on Katharine Hepburn in the 1942 classic Woman of the Year (at 5:46 on the DVD), you know he wants to explore that leg which she has been stretching and find just where it leads. Just by the glances the exchange in the ensuing scene, you know they find each other attractive and want to act on attraction.

That coupled with a good script (well, until the concluding scene) makes the movie compelling. We believe the tension and affection between the two. Indeed, their cinematic chemistry defines the various movies they made together, overcoming, in a number of cases mediocre scripts. For example, in Desk Set is almost unwatchable, but the scenes where the two are together more than make up for the emptiness of much of the rest of the script.

And bad screen chemistry can ruin even a well-crafted script, the first two-thirds of Absence of Malice, which I watched this past week. From the first moment the leads, Paul Newman and Sally Field, come together, anyone familiar with contemporary cinema knows they are being set up to fall in love. We know this, in large part, because Field spills her coffee when she first hears Newman’s voice identifying himself to her. Sydney Pollack, the film’s director, needed to have her do this to show how she was caught off guard by his appearance.

Miss Hepburn, however, didn’t need to spill any coffee or drop a hairpin when she first caught site of the man with whom she had been feuding in the pages of the newspaper for which they both wrote. (more…)

I just want to be clear. So please stop me if I miss something or if I’m wrong. But I want to make sure I list everything that is morally justified by liberals versus things that get them upset:

1 – A rich, famous brother of a Democrat President who drives drunk off a bridge and murders a young woman who was not his wife: OKAY

2 – A famous Hollywood Director who intoxicates, then rapes a 13 year old girl, confesses to it and then runs from the law for 30 years: OKAY

3 – A Democrat President who sexually harasses an intern under his employ in the Oval Office then lies under oath: OKAY

4 – A Republican Congressman who texts with 17-18 year old boys but never met them: NOT OKAY

5 – A Democrat Senator currently with leadership status who was the elected “Exalted Cyclops” in the Ku Klux Klan and repeatedly used racial slurs on television until he became too old and his words slurred: OKAY

6 – A Republican Congressman who yelled at a President who happens to be African-American: NOT OKAY

7 – A Democrat school teacher, now Presidential “Safe Schools Czar”, who did nothing when a teenager told him of dangerous sex habits with older men: OKAY

9 – A liberal Late Night host sexually harassing employees on his staff: ALSO OKAY

And that is just the tip of the iceberg of the Democrats’ lack of morality. Never mind the hypocrisy on CIA interrogations, closing GITMO, exploding the Federal Debt, government transparency, and massive Congressional corruption.

After nearly 17 years in the Senate, “only three of the nearly 400 bills she has sponsored have ever been passed.” Her senior colleague, the decent Dianne Feinstein who has served two full months longer than Mrs. Boxer “has had four times as many bills signed into law.”

As the 2010 Senate race heats up, Californians should not lose sight of Mrs. Boxer’s record. The state’s economy is ailing. Nearly 1 in 8 people in the Golden State are out of work. And Barbara Boxer kowtows to liberal interest groups.

We need someone who’s going to represent the Golden State, crafting legislation in Washington that will reduce regulatory burdens in California–and across the country. With fewer regulations, entrepreneurs can more readily start up new businesses, while those owning existing firms can pour their profits into innovation and expansion rather than bureaucratic compliance. The former leads to a growing economy with more jobs, the latter leads to continuing economic paralysis.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Boxer hasn’t been writing legislation which helps business. Her bills would only increase regulation. So, maybe it’s a good thing she hasn’t been successful. But, it would be a better thing if instead of having a Senator take up space while misrepresenting her constituents, we had somehow actually acting on their behalf.

There are times when a critic chimes in in a civil tone in the comment section, adding a wrinkle to the story under consideration (in the post at hand) that causes me to reconsider my conclusion. Such was the care Jody took in distinguishing the era when the teen confided in then-teacher Kevin Jennings that he had been having sex with an adult from the world today Then, there weren’t the support groups we now have. Had the boy reported this to the authorities, this might have forced the kid out, making his sexuality known and putting him in the spotlight.

Fair points. It may have hurt the teenager more had his case become public.

And while that comment (and others in a similar vein) have caused me to reconsider my view, after considerable thought I return to my original conclusion: Jennings should resign from his position in the federal Department of Education.

Had this story come out because a friend in whom he had confided revealed it, I might be less inclined to see him leave his current post. But, recall that he volunteered this information in a book and in a public conference. His references to the story indicate he thought he handled the situation properly. Not once in the statements he made before this week (that I could find online*) does he even say (or appear to suggest) that he should have handled the situation differently (as he did in his statement on Tuesday).

It is particularly troubling that he did not discourage the boy from having sex with adults. If reporting the incident might have created undue hardship on the student, why not then warn him both about the dangers of unsafe sex as well as about the perils of having sex with men you meet in public lavatories. He could inform the boy that men who have sex with teens usually take advantage of them, likely causing great emotional pain and creating psychological problems which may well plague him into adulthood.

That he would continue to write about the incident –sharing it with a mass audience — without showing any remorse, any second thoughts suggests he oblivious to the psychological issues. (more…)